I had been searching for the most perfect color for my website for a while… when I ran into Lapis Lazuli I fell in love.

Lapis Lazuli is not actually a color, it is a stone. My youngest son pointed me at it while playing Minecraft. The stone has been used to create gems and pigments. The color is called ‘ultramarine’. It made me think about Yves Klein’s blue, worth millions. This reference can also be found in this excellent New York Times article, who called ultramarine the most perfect color.

Pure natural ultramarine pigment is as expensive as gold. Therefore the color has always been related to holiness, wealth and good fortune.

The Paris review quotes Kandinsky, a connoisseur of color: “The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural.”

Personally, I like the reference to the color of an unstyled link. I used ‘#0000ee’ initially for the background of my website, but that was not only painful on the eyes, it was also way too trendy. I changed it to ultramarine, which makes it much more pleasant to look at, less trendy and therefore a much better choice. It might well be the most perfect color .

()  Joost van der Schee